Dr. Kevin Fahey Founder and CEO of Market Operandi

Kevin has driven dramatic growth while holding executive positions in large, established firms as well as startup and growth-phase companies. He has also been a serial entrepreneur in multiple industries, navigating dozens of successful fundraising rounds and executing turnarounds and exits in small and large companies. 

Kevin understands startups from both the entrepreneur's and the investor's perspectives. He and the Market Operandi (MO) team uniquely bridge the gap by showing founders how they need to think as operators and how they need to think as investors. As companies grow, Market Operandi understands what their investors do not, which is the criticality of their scaling order.

Over the past decade, Kevin has used his diverse experience to create MO's proprietary and vetted startup acceleration systems and framework, successfully guiding dozens of startups from their first institutional round of funding to and through their growth rounds. As CEO of MO, Kevin has steered multiple obscure startups to become award-winning success stories.  

Kevin leads the Market Operandi team in bringing their technical and executive management expertise to hardtech/deeptech B2B startups and innovation teams at larger organizations, enabling them to scale rapidly while mitigating risks. He and his team also help companies penetrate new markets and optimize for multi-market growth.

At Xradia (acquired by ZEISS) and FEI (acquired by ThermoFisher), Kevin grew each business by more than 4X within 4 years. He led their entry into new markets and established efficient sales, marketing, and management systems, enabling these businesses to scale into the future. Kevin also successfully pivoted ESI, KMLabs, and ZEISS into new markets, creating new business lines and implementing integrated sales and marketing channels that produced rapid sales increases. 

Kevin holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Kendall Read Early Stage and Photonics/Quantum Lead

Kendall has extensive experience in commercialization, operations, and R&D at nascent startups in photonics, quantum, and medical devices. As a scientist-turned-entrepreneur who has navigated the various pitfalls at half a dozen different startups and advised many more, Kendall is uniquely positioned to understand the experiences of early-stage startups, and offer sage advice to technical companies entering early growth phases and commercialization.

At Market Operandi, Kendall leads our early-stage, deeptech startup programs, adding commercial structure to strong technical teams.  

As the first employee at KMLabs, Kendall established its early growth, starting in a residential basement and expanding to a profitable, deeptech manufacturing team of 20 employees, while learning the many hard lessons of early-stage tech startup life and growth. Her work at MicroPhage and Fortune 20 distributor Cardinal Health gave Kendall unique insights into proven hospital lab marketing strategies used by larger companies, but more importantly, understanding how such best practices must be dramatically modified for smaller and nascent startups.

She later led the sales, marketing and product management efforts at ColdQuanta (now Infleqtion), navigating commercial sales in the pre-commercial world of quantum. As COO at CaliberMRI, Kendall restructured and stabilized manufacturing and operations following separation from their parent company.  

Kendall is a strong believer in strategically leveraging non-dilutive funding for deeptech startups. She has been a reviewer for the Colorado Advanced Industries Accelerator grant program since 2015, analyzing the commercial and technical plans of hundreds of deeptech startups.  She has also helped construct over a dozen funded SBIR and other grant applications.

Kendall has a Ph.D. in physics from Washington State University and a B.A. in physics from Carleton College, performing the majority of her dissertation work at the University of Michigan and IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center.

Allister McBride International and Industrial Practice Lead

Ron Tousignant Sales Systems and Scalability

Ron has deep strategic and tactical experience producing sustainable, high-growth sales environments within complex, multi-segment organizations.

Ron had nationwide sales management responsibility for Siemens Medical Solutions, with a focus on key Women's Health Markets. He also had a national management role at Samsung Ultrasound, where he restructured the organization and delivered 30-40% revenue growth. Ron's diverse background leverages his expert understanding of sales, marketing, product development, and service.

For Market Operandi, Ron heads up commercialization strategy and implementation for capital equipment with a focus on helping start-ups establish sustainable high-growth business models.

Dr. Steven Kirch CxO Coachsultant

Brenda Ropoulos Marketing Strategies and Systems

Brenda Ropoulos leads our integrated marketing and strategies practice. She has nearly four decades of technology marketing experience and has had the pleasure of working with some of the most brilliant technologists in the semiconductor, laser, internet security, telecommunications, and microscopy industries, as well as advanced academic thinkers. She loves to challenge them with the "so what, who cares" of their capabilities, guiding them through the process of deepening their own understanding of their markets, their customers' needs and desires, and the impact of timing on their businesses. Over the years, she has helped numerous companies launch new markets, products, and businesses.

As a visionary strategist who takes rapid creative action, she understands that regardless of today's technology options (which will be different tomorrow), the questions and answers are the same. She asserts the onus of a good marketing team is to get them in front of the right decision-makers, with the ability to measure results rapidly. 

Lon Ensler Financial Modeling for Strategic Analysis and CFO Coaching

Lon has held senior finance positions, including CFO, at several high-growth technology companies. He currently works with medical and industrial hard tech start-ups where he has successfully structured their operating plans and reoriented their strategies towards higher profitability and faster growth. In addition to forming the basis of operating models and effective Go-To-Market plans, Lon’s unique approach to financial models positions start-ups for more effective VC pitches and seamless due diligence discussions.

Lon drives the real actions of the commercial team to scalability and success. 

• Developed and proved the business case for a strategic realignment of a SAAS solutions company that resulted in billions in additional revenue. 
• At ADAC, the domestic market share increased from 15% to 50%. 
• At Xradia, revenue grew at 35% CAGR consistently for 5 years, ASPs increased by 3X, while the company simultaneously achieved record gross margins.

The growth at these companies was achieved by systematic and careful optimization of cash generation and spend. This allowed for maximum possible growth without raising more equity capital. This is a skill that Lon loves to teach budding executives as a core competency.

Tammy L. (Kelly) Estrada, MBA Director of Marketing & MarCom Strategy

As the Director of Marketing and MarCom Strategy at Market Operandi,  Tammy brings a dynamic blend of strategic vision and tactical execution to our marketing initiatives. 
She has honed her marketing expertise over the last two decades at start-ups and large firms in industries ranging from medical devices, construction equipment technology, and compostable consumer products. 

Tammy combines her passion for brand storytelling, a mastery of imagery, and data analysis to create authentic and impactful marketing communications. Whether through digital platforms or direct interactions, she ensures the messaging is strategically positioned to reach and resonate with the target audience. In addition, Tammy establishes that the messaging both connects with that audience and drives measurable results, demonstrating the effectiveness of her strategies.

Tammy has an MBA with a concentration in marketing from the Carson College of Business at Washington State University and a Bachelor of Science in Consumer Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

She is on the board of the American Marketing Association's chapter in Boston. 

Raleigh Estrada Marketing and Sales Integration

Raleigh’s career has focused on building and enhancing the performance of sales and marketing teams. He was an integral part of the KLA team that drove yield management to mainstream practice in the semiconductor industry. He was also part of the Xradia marketing team (now part of Zeiss) that identified key application areas in four disparate market segments, which resulted in multi-year >25% CAGR revenue growth prior to the acquisition.

At Market Operandi, Raleigh heads up strategic marketing initiatives with a focus on helping start-ups map customer value, prioritize market segments, create positioning strategies, and execute product introductions including salesforce training.

Raleigh has a BS in Electrical Engineering and Semiconductor Process Technology from the University of Illinois (at Urbana-Champaign).